The current mini-era of TV revivals has surprisingly offered up more successes than all-out failures at this point, and while many GIlmore Girls fans found reasons to gripe about the Netflix-housed A Year in the Life, it hasn't stopped everybody from vocalizing desires for the streaming service to order up another batch of episodes. Conversations of that sort are reportedly happening behind closed diner doors, but how would the stars themselves feel about returning once more? Here's Lauren Graham with a less-than-enthusiastic answer.
Now it has become a dialogue with the fans of the show. If it all existed in a vacuum, I would play that character until my dying day... In terms of an actor, I would never tire of that. Now it has become, 'What can we do that is satisfying, and worth continuing, and gratifying to the people who care so much about it?' I don't know if there is a need to do more. I would never want it to feel like we overstayed our welcome.
Setting up her answer like that -- with the enthusiastic promise of wanting to never leave the role under very specific circumstances -- was a good way for Lauren Graham to offer a nice bit of salt and lemon before burning viewers with the tequila shot of disappointment that followed. (I guess I should have made this more about bitter coffee than tequila.) Granted, the actress doesn't straight-up say that she doesn't want to be involved with any more seasons of Gilmore Girls, and it sounds as if she still has the baseline interest to reprise the fast-talking self-made woman for another season outside of a vacuum.
But she's definitely not torn over its chances of not coming back, going so far as to say while there's a way to continue Lorelai and Rory's stories, she doesn't know "if that's the best thing for them." It's a refreshing kind of honesty, even if it's equally damning to fans who want nothing more than to grow older with this TV universe.And as she also pointed out, she only found out about Netflix picking up more Gilmore Girls from news reports the first time around, so we never really know how anything will turn out.
During Sunday's "The Contenders" Emmy panel (via Deadline), Alexis Bledel sounded slightly less pessimistic about her views on playing Rory again, perhaps because her character has a much bigger arc to play out. In her words:
I think for me it comes down to what story we're telling. I'm just interested in telling a story that is dynamic and that I sort of relate to and can hook into. And if that happens ... I don't know. It's such an unknown. I don't think we anticipated that this would happen.
Alexis Bledel's answer quite sensible, as she would dictate her return based on if the story was good enough to warrant such a thing. That should always be the motivation for all TV shows, though it obviously isn't. and one assumes that creator Amy Sherman-Palladino has other interesting directions to take this story that would please both actresses and more. Other actors have expressed interest in returning, and Netflix is clearly interested in making it happen, but it all comes down to the details. Such as Lauren Graham being a part of a new project, as well as Sherman-Palladino's new Amazon comedy, since both of those things could create a scheduling nightmare.
While the future of Stars Hollow and its quirky population is still in question, fans can still watch the entirety of Gilmore Girls' first seven seasons and its A Year in the Life follow-up on Netflix, where everything is available to stream. There are tons of other shows hitting the small screen soon that you can fill your time with, though, and you can find them all with our midseason premiere guide and our summer TV schedule.
